During the press conference, reporters were told that the staging of Babchenko's death had been coordinated by the journalist and Ukrainian police following serious death threats against him.

After being warned he was the target of a state-ordered assassination plot, Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko faked his own death in order to expose those coordinating his murder. "Olya, excuse me, please, but there was no other option".

Babchenko, 41, fled his native Russia for Ukraine past year after receiving death threats for criticizing Russian military involvement in Syria.

Ilya Ponomarev, a former Russian lawmaker who also moved to Ukraine, said Babchenko continued being threatened after he settled last fall in Kiev, where he worked as a host for the Crimean Tatar TV station.

Russian officials also criticized Ukraine for failing to provide adequate protection to journalists.

Another journalist, Sergiy Grishyn, said "Babchenko will have to give me money for pills" for the stress he'd suffered.

He said a hitman was paid to carry out the killing after being recruited by Russian special forces.

The 41-year-old's death stunned colleagues and added to tension between Moscow and Kyiv, whose ties have been badly damaged by Russia's seizure of Crimea and backing for separatist militants in a devastating war in eastern Ukraine.

In a social media post soon after news of his death emerged, the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Vladimir Groysman, said it held Russian Federation responsible. Babchenko was 19 when he was sent to fight in Russia's first Chechen campaign in the 1990s as a conscript.

In a Facebook post hours before the fake killing, Babchenko wrote about his "second birthday" when a Ukrainian general refused to let him on a helicopter that was then shot down by Kremlin-backed rebels, killing 14 people on board in 2014.

Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma, told Russian news agencies Wednesday that Russia would be happy to help with the investigation if Ukrainian authorities requested it.

He faced backlash after commenting on the crash of a Russian plane transporting the world-famous military choir Alexandrov Ensemble en route to Syria.

Former Russian state television journalist Pavel Sheremetwas killed by a vehicle bomb in July 2016 while driving near his home in Kiev.

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